umyl026
E J Bull Joined: September 26th 2008
Logged in: October 11th 2008
Logged in: October 11th 2008
Travel Blog Posts
City bus tour Ottawa On Friday after noon I tooK the city bus tour around Ottawa. It was a bright sunny day perfect for sitting on the top deck of an open bus. Trip to Gatineau Today I am taking a tour out to Gatineau Park to see the wildlife.... read more
Uni of Ottawa
University of Ottawa Digitization in Canada by John Teskey This is a mass digitization project being carried out by different institutions including UofT and LAC. The aim is to digitize books and papers by Canadians and about Canada. The final service will be delivered through Canadiana.org. Currently have 200,000 metadata records loaded representing 1 million objects. National science library, emerging roles in the Canadian context: CISTI The model in Canada for the collection of STM materials is different from the Uk. The LAC collect documentation of Canadiana but it is CISTI that collects STM information on a National level. CISTI serves health, academic, key industry sectors, NRC, researchers Responsible for NRC Research Press - have created a platform to support societies in their publications. The Na... read more
Tour of Parliament
Library of Parliament visit Our visit to the Parliament began with a tour of the buildings by one of the public guides. We got to see both the House of Commons and the senate. We were also taken up the memorial tower that has all the names of the war dead in a beautiful book. The pages are turned each day so that all those that lost their lives we remembered during the year. After the public tour we were taken on a special tour of the Parliament library that most visitors are not able to do. The Parliament library was recently refurbished at a cost of $90million ... read more
LAC
Library and Archives Canada preservation centre visit We spent the morning at the LAC preservation centre in Gatineau. We did not really know what to expect from this visit but it turned out to be fascinating. We met a number of the technical staff carrying out preservation work and digitization projects. We were also taken into the storage containers and had the safety and the control features explained. Amazing building that should be used in a sci-fi film. LAC website ... read more
Ryerson University Right from the start it was clear that Ryerson is quite different from the other institutions we had visited. Ryerson is a town centre location and its development master plan includes - urban intensification -building upwards - seedy area in town so plan is to make a more wholesome feel good University - major building work to be done - high density stacks in basement In the library they had a number of interesting job positions: Digital Initiatives librarian Digital support librarian Collection Evaluation librarian We also heard about a new service that is being introduced which is called RACER - The service offers an electronic population of ILL form for citations found that the University does not have full text access.Someone suggested that this is similar to a VDX system available from OC ... read more
Marriott hotel
Travel to Ottawa After we left Ryerson we went straight to the airport to catch a flight to Ottawa. I cannot tell you anything about the flight as I fell asleep before we even took off and and only woke upwhen we landed. The Yow airports bus that I had booked was ready and waiting for us. We got to the Marriott in good time to yet changed and get out for dinner.... read more
CARL Dinner After arriving in Ottawa at 6.15 pm it was a quick turn around at the hotel and a cab ride to the Byward Market and the Black Thorn Café. It was a good opportunity to meet members of CARL that come from right across Canada.... read more
View from CN Tower
CN Tower On our last night in Toronto a few of us went up the CN Tower to see the view and to experience the glass floor. I was the only one brave enough to stand on the glass although I did not lookdown!... read more
Bronfman Business Library
Visit to York University York University was about 1 hr from downtown Toronto. We had a really useful visit there and again had the chance to meet and chat with many of the library staff there. They presented on a number of development issues that they are working on. 1. Information literacy The approach to Information Literacy at York was very similar to things being done in the Uk. They have a program coordinator and wrote a manifesto to identify goals. They are concerned that despite all their efforts they may not be really making a difference to the learning procass. York have moved from Blackboard to Moodle because of cost implications. They have created a library block and library course - at Macro level. Also have more specifically identified resources offered within courses at Micro ... read more
Robarts Library
Visit to U of T On Monday we had a full days visit to the University of Toronto. As well as some really interesting presentations we were given a tour of three of the University's libraries: the Robarts, Thomas Fisher Rare book library and the Gerstein Science Information Centre. We also had the opportunity to meet with a great number of the library staff over a fantastic 3 course lunch. The University library is involved in a number of projects that have an impact beyond the University. Several initiatives have provincial funding with U of T taking the lead as the largest library in Ontario. The sheer scale of the operation, University Community, book stock, budget etc. wereso vast in comparison to Queen Mary it was really difficult to even imagine how it was all managed. ... read more
